Last Sunday I was asked along by my good pal Jules Birkby to the ‘Teapots and Twirls‘ event she helps organise at Interplay in Armley. It’s essentially a get together for young and old to hook up and dance and drink tea, and this was their Christmas Special. I didn’t take much more information in after I heard there’d be festive cakes & free mulled wine, so ducked along with Clare and my camera.
It was a nice opportunity to road test my new Canon Tilt-Shift 45mm lens, which can mess with the plane of focus and add selective blur to parts of the image. It’s a fun look, much replicated by camera apps/photoshop filters, but there’s nothing like the real thing.
Jules’ hubby-to-be (and the designer of my official site barnabyaldrick.com) Mr Tom Evans was bravely manning the baltic door
Arguably the biggest teapot I’ve ever seen was being used as a raffle tin!
Fun and games abound inside!
Clearly Jules’ handiwork! She runs a brilliant design company making stationary for weddings and events (check out her site here) 
When we arrived there was a jazz dance lesson going down
This one was shot on the 50mm f1.2, a similar focal length, but a different vibe to the 45mm f2.8 TS-E
Kitschen! Arf arf
#Nom
The lovely Jules!
Mulled wine tastes all the better served in fine china!
The simply awesome jump-jive outfit Louis Louis Louis provided live sets for the crowds to boogie to
Always good to see young and old getting down
I’ve had these guys play a few times at my Sunday Service night in Leeds. They’re also gracing our festive Charity special on December 25th (it’ll be an ace night and all are welcome – more details here)
This chap, Adam, is an AMAZING skiffle double basist.
For those interested in the photo post production on these images, after importing and filing em down in Adobe Lightroom, I tweaked em to taste using the VSCO Lightroom presets, for an aged film look, then I ran them through Alienskin Exposure 4 to degrade things further, adding the edges, scratches and light leaks.
I don’t generally push my wedding photography work as far as this, as to me ‘image degradation’ doesn’t seem like a wise idea on client images. In that work I’m always looking for the cleanest possible colour and B+W images that won’t date and don’t follow fads, but I do like to play with this look on my personal work.
Before we left, Jules and some of her girls laid out a few carols 
Fun times!
Hope you enjoyed folks.
